Over the past couple of weeks, I have listened to dozens of hours
of talk radio, most of it focused on the effort to impose, by force, a
collectivized medical system on what is clearly no longer a free
people.

During all that time, plenty has been said about a wide range of
related topics. Those I listen to are by no means monolithic in their
views, but vary on details of policy, philosophy, personality, and
attitude. Sometimes they differ to a startling degree, considering
that the majority of them started out, more or less, as conservative
Republicans.

As Al Franken has demonstrated, liberals give lousy talk radio.

Neverthelessdespite the fact that some of these individuals
have since left the Republican Party in disappointment or disgust and
now simply refer to themselves as "conservatives" with a threatening
implication that they might someday form their own political
partythere are certain things that I conspicuously haven't been hearing
from them that are vital to understanding and participating in this
debate.

"Like what?" I pretend to hear you ask.

No less than anybody else, I have been sickened and enraged at the
vile manner in which the repulsive Nancy Pelosi has been willing to
distort established custom and Constitutional lawany historical
consequences be damnedin order to get what she wants out of that
"parliament of whores" we mistakenly call the United States House of
Representatives.

What has gone unsaid is that Republicans are equally lawless when
it comes to getting their way. The last half of the 20th century, for
example, was filled with undeclared and therefore illegal warsKorea
and Vietnam come to mindinstigated by Democrats, but which
could have been brought to a halt by a single dissenting voice, either
in the House or the Senate, of some courageous Republican who actually
gave a damn about the rule of law. Instead, Republicans have eagerly
embraced these wars and ended up being their principal defenders and
apologists.

Another example: there is nothing in the Constitution authorizing
any legislative body (including, under the Supremacy Clause, state
assemblies, county commissions, and city councils) to outlaw drugs.
When a coalition of do-gooding bucket-heads and scheming racketeers
plotted to outlaw alcohol in the early 20th century, even they could
understand that they would have to amend the Constitution to
accomplish it, which they did. No such amendment has ever even been
proposed to justify the War of Drugsan invention of the sinister
Nixon Administration, expanded by that shining paragon of individual
liberty, the sainted Ronald Reaganand therefore every bit of it is
illegal.

It's too bad that we no longer have a Libertarian Party in this
country. It would be fun to see Republicans flap and squeal and dirty
themselves when LP candidates promised to "make whole" each and every
victim of the War on Drugs, no matter how unsavory or socially
unacceptable.

But I digress.

Republicans are highly enthusiastic about kidnapping and holding
individuals in places like Guantanamo, without even the faintest nod
to due process, claiming war powers in a conflict that has never been
properly declared. Just as Republicans lied, during the War of Northern
Aggression, that the states had been created by the federal government
and had no right to secede, they claim now, with equal truthfulness,
that only Americans have rights, when the fact is that the Founding
Fathers saw themselves as upholding basic rights possessed equally by
every human being. See the Declaration of Independence, if you doubt
me:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator
with certain inalienable rights, that among these rights are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Of course they'd claim it was exactly the other way around, if
that suited their purpose, which isand always has beenthe
accumulation of power and money, not necessarily in that order. If it
happens to be an American they wish to mistreat this way, they simply
declare him to be an "enemy alien" and his exclusively American rights
evaporate.

I always said that in a country where a legislature, its sessions
limited by statute, could alter reality by turning back the clock (I
actually saw this done, once, with a long pole pushing on the hour
hand), any travesty was possible. I see nothing lately to prove me
wrong.

But it is in the matter of torture that Republican duplicity,
hypocrisy, and lawlessness stand forth most starkly. Everybody (even
Republicans) knows perfectly well what torture is: the use of pain,
extreme discomfort, or deprivationor the threat of pain, extreme
discomfort, or deprivationto elicit some behavior from a helpless
victim.

Just because Republicans deny that Americans use torturethey
claim, ludicrously, that since the U.S, doesn't use torture, whatever
they're doing, by definition, can't be torture; they claim that things
like sleep deprivation and excruciatingly loud noises, and chaining
their victims' throats to the floor for hours by a couple of inches of
chain is just "enhanced interrogationtheir denial doesn't make it
so.

And now, with this shameful record of lawbreaking in both their
remote and recent past, and not a moral leg left to stand on (Lincoln
was called "Honest Abe" for the same reason that bald men are called
"Curly", and "W" was literally the spawn of the CIA) Republicans are
finally getting what they asked for. Unfortunately, we're getting what
they asked for, too. If, as many of my friends are suggestingon
their way out of Dodgethat America is beyond saving, Republicans
must accept their full share of the blame for killing the American
Dream.

This is not to lift a microgram of guilt from the shoulders of
the Democrats. After hearing all the ways that Pelosi and her orc-like
minions plan to bend or break the rules and the law, in order to erect
the iron dictatorship they desire, I looked up "representative" in an
online thesaurus, hoping to discover the perfect antonym to describe
them.

I couldn't find anything useful. There is no suitable antonym to
"representative", not in this context. But, since these parasites are
plainly ignoring the will of the peoplethree quarters of whom
don't want government healthcare and have been saying so as loudly and
repeatedly as they can for monthsthey can't accurately refer to
themselves as "representatives", not any more. They must be something
else.

The word "congress" has a number of different meanings, and the
kind of congress I'm thinking about can be carried out voluntarily or
against its victims' wills. Some female politician (I can't remember
whether it was Pelosi or the meretricious creature from my district)
has assured us that, once medicalized Marxism has been forced on us,
we'll like it, which reveals nothing more than the attitude of a
rapist.

Only a week ago, the congressional baggage who claims to represent
me was blogging to the whole wide world about how she was really a
fiscal conservative and loathed the very idea of government imposed
healthcare. Then, overnight, she magically and mysteriously changed
her tiny mind. Now she hasn't a prayer of getting reelected in this
district. Similarly, we all know that Dennis Kucinich made similar
claims until he was "taken for a ride" on Air Force One, after which
he became a champion of Obamacare. There are many other stories like
these.

Radio hosts and callers alike speculated for days about what these
people were offeredor were threatened withto change their
votes and betray their constituencies. When I heard about Kucinich, I
thought a lot about the movie Mulholland Falls. The other side swore
to remember them and to vote them out of office next November and in
2012in fact their whole strategy rests on being able to accomplish
that.

But here's something I never heard anywhere: were they told that,
owing to an emergencywidespread civil unrest the administration
planned to manufacturethe 2010 election would be postponed or
canceled, and their seats would be secure for as long as they wanted
them? I wonder. It would certainly account for the "political suicide"
they appear to be committing with this relentless drive of theirs to
socialism.

And that means no more democracy, no more republic, but rule,
instead, by troops, the secret dream, if they were truthful, of many a
Republican, and a return to the whip and the rack for those who won't
bend.

I'd had better hopes for America.

Didn't you?

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Four-time Prometheus Award-winner L. Neil Smith has
been called one of the world's foremost authorities on the ethics
of self-defense. He is the author of more than 25 books, including
The American Zone, Forge of the Elders, Pallas, The Probability
Broach, Hope (with Aaron Zelman), and his collected articles
and speeches, Lever Action, all of which may be purchased
through his website "The Webley Page" at
lneilsmith.org.

Neil is presently at work on Ares, the middle volume
of the epic Ngu Family Cycle, and on Where We Stand:
Libertarian Policy in a Time of Crisis with his daughter, Rylla.

See stunning full-color graphic-novelizations of The
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